Re: GNOME Office and OpenOffice (fwd)

[Michael Hoennig "(mi)" <mi sun com>]

Hi everybody here on the list,

some may already know me, for over ten years now I'm working on 
StarOffice and now of cause on OpenOffice. My working area at the 
beginning was testing the UI-abstraction layer, later I worked on the 
inter-operating-system layer for file-system access, then I managed the 
C++ component framework stuff and now I am working on the API of 
OpenOffice, where I am the project owner as well. So much for my 
introduction to this list.

> > > Why can't "parts of this software" (that meaning what I wrote in GPL
> > > alone) "can only be distributed under the GPL"? After all, I CAN
> > > include the license in any code, and it's THAT code that is GPL.
>
> > No reason. It's yours. Do with it whatever you want.
>
> ok, so there is no need for AbiWord contributors to dual license, since 
> their portions of code can be used in GPL alone?

I am not a lawyer, nor am I an official representative of Sun either, but 
I don't think it is possible to take any code into the core of OpenOffice 
which is not dual licensed and where the copyright is not transferred to 
Sun. What you could do, of cause, is splitting OpenOffice, making a new 
product on the source code - but that it is legally possible you know and 
that it is practically almost impossible you know as well, simply too 
much stuff.

What is certainly possible, is to write addon components using the 
external API (http://api.oenoffice.org). But if not dual licensed, these 
cannot become part of OpenOffice itself, because the branded product 
StarOffice is based on that which is not GPL and cannot be GPL (uses 
third party non-GPL-stuff) :-(

I see the problem, but I cannot solve it. Probably we would need a Sun 
lawyer on this list for such things, so that they can get aware of these 
problems as well.

	Michael

-- 
I am speaking for myself, not for my employer.
Please do NOT direct any questions about OpenOffice/StarOffice 
to my email address, use appropriate mailing lists instead.